Here Is Your Wonkette Explainer Of What Just Happened In Syria!
Congrats!
Well hotdamn, Syria!
Rebel forces in the country south of Turkey, west of Iraq, east of Lebanon, kittycorner to Israel, have routed out their dictator of decades, the weak-chinned lisping London-trained-ophthalmologist-cum-tyrant Bashar al-Assad. He and his wife Asma have now fled the country for Russia, and statues of his daddy have been getting yoinked down all over, and prisoners have been freed. Well, bye!
You don’t see that every day!
You may be wondering how he got there. Bashar’s daddy Hafez ruled the place from 1971 until 2000, following a series of three coups that propelled Hafez from leader of the Air Force to Defense Minister to Big Man in Charge, the boss of a one-party dictatorship and cult of personality starring himself. Then son Bashar took over, 24 years ago, which is how it goes in cult-of-personality totalitarian dictatorships. The new dictator was supposed to have been the eldest son Basil, but he died in a car crash, leaving jug-eared Bashar with the job.
Let us begin Bashar’s Greatest Hits: The Retrospective with this gushing profile of his British-born wife and himself by Joan Juliet Buck titled “The Rose of the Desert” that appeared in Vogue magazine in February of 2011, because it’s some of the most delusional fawning you ever will read, arguably the most dictator ass-kissery ever put to print by a Western publication, if you exclude the American press during the Trump years.
Back in those days, the West was trying to make friendly overtures, to woo Assad away from getting in bed with Russia, Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Assad was trying to give his image “brand essence” in the west, too. In 2006 the London communications firm Bell Pottinger helped his wife set up her communications office. And not long after, the couple was paying the Washington public relations firm Brown Lloyd James $5,000 a month to class up their image in the West.
The image makeover worked, briefly, kind of. In December of 2010 the US posted its first ambassador there since 2006. Assad did an interview with Barbara Walters, in which he pleaded ignorance about literal children being arrested and tortured in his country for writing disapproving graffiti about him, denied killing his own citizens, and said he wouldn’t step down because all of his people love him just so very much. Seemingly returning the favor, Walters wrote college and job recommendations for the press aide and the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations. (Walters later apologized about that.)
Glowing profiles of wife Asma were published, first in Paris Match, which called her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones,” and then in that Vogue profile, which described her as “glamorous, young, and very chic,” and “a determined swath cut through space with a flash of red soles. Dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace.” Dressed to kill, you might say? Why do the dictator wives of the poorest countries always go for the most expensive accessories? It’s so tacky!
The piece called Syria the “safest country in the Middle East.” Asma builds museums! The Assads are so democracy-minded that they let their children vote on what they will have for lunch! The Assads fight extremism … through art! The country is so secure, said Bashar, that “Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to come and get some training!” (Brangelina did, in fact, visit Syria in 2009, to highlight the plight of Iraqi refugees there.)
After Vogue published the piece in print, jaws dropped all over the world, and everybody puzzled over what combination of stupid and complicit Anna Wintour must have been to run that shit. Then Vogue tried its darnedest to scrub every trace of it from the Internet. But a copy still exists, on an Assad fan page that looks like it was built in Geocities in 1998.
At the very same time all of that fawning was going on, Syria was descending into civil war, and Syrian citizens were attempting an uprising of their own, bolstered by the spirit of the Arab Spring. And they kept on attempting to get rid of that guy for the next 13 years, while also fighting in factions amongst themselves, while Assad put down his opposition with as much brutality as anyone could imagine.
While Assad was fighting “extremism” through “art,” he was also fighting his own citizens who hated his fucking guts with prison, torture, and by gassing his own people at least 161 times. Around the time Assad was sucking up to Barbara Walters and Asma was posting feelgood updates to her Facebook page, journalists in his own country were in prison, trying to record the names of their fellow prisoners on scraps of fabric with ink made out of rust and their own blood with a pen crafted from a chicken bone, so their names wouldn’t disappear forever. American journalist Austin Tice disappeared at a checkpoint there in 2012, thought to have been taken by Assad’s government. Though handsome Joe Biden thinks he might still be alive!
It was the “safest country in the Middle East” for Assad, because a system of secret police threw anybody in jail suspected of disagreeing with him. Since March of 2011 an estimated more than 617,000 people have been killed, 13.5 million people (about 60 percent of the population of the entire country) were displaced, and 155,000 people were detained or simply “disappeared” by the government.
By 2013, members of Hezbollah in Lebanon were crossing the border to fight on behalf of Assad’s regime, and by 2015 Assad was taking money and weapons from Iran and Russia. By the summer of 2023, Russia had 20 military bases in Syria. Here’s an archive link to the New York Times explainer, if you would like even more background.
If you may recall, back then Barack Obama was reluctant to get directly involved in the situation, beyond sanctions and funding and sending troops to support the Kurdish militias that were fighting on the Turkish and Iraqi borders. He drew a “red line” when it came to chemical weapons, one that Assad waltzed right on over. Then Obama went to Congress to vote on the use of military force, and right before they voted, the US and Russia reached an agreement that Syria would destroy its chemical weapons material and equipment, for sure, for real this time. Spoiler, he did not do that, regardless of what useful idiot Tulsi Gabbard might have thought.
Ginger Donya wanted to be even less involved, abruptly pulling those US troops and funding for the Kurds, leaving them for dead after a phone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a move that everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Mike Huckabee called a big fucking mistake. (Though Putin cheered, natch.)
Meanwhile, the US has provided nearly $19 billion in humanitarian aid to Syrians and the surrounding countries hosting its refugees, and the European Union has spent around €33.3 billion.
As rebel forces circled Damascus, Assad reportedly pleaded with Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban to get a certain incoming president to help him, but That Man is not president yet, nor was he interested. And now rebel forces, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), AKA Organization for the Liberation of Greater Syria, led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, have thrown out their shitty dictator all on their own, in an 11-day offensive bolstered by Russia being drained by Ukraine, and Hezbollah by Israel.
What comes next? Democracy? A new dictator? We shall see. For now HTS has disavowed Shari’a law, has allowed the Christian community to rebuild its churches, and has sworn that Syria will be united and no longer a puppet regime for Russia or Iran. Which would be so nice for them! The incoming dickbag US president has vowed to not be involved in any way. But Old Handsome Joe is now bombing 75-plus sites over there, hopefully taking out some of those chemical weapons factories, and maybe he can find Austin Tice in some prison, too.
The Assads are now reportedly seeking asylum in Russia, so guess Asma won’t be getting to Paris to shop for Louboutins in person again anytime soon.
Well, congrats, Syria, and good luck!
[Archive link of Vogue profile / New York Times “Syria’s Assads Turned to West for Glossy P.R.” archive link / The Atlantic / NPR / Christian Science Monitor / New York Times “How to Understand Syria’s Rapidly Changing Civil War” archive link / AP / USAid / Bloomberg]
A comment that has little to do with Syria (good on ya, Syrians!) but does have to do with French fashion and Russian oligarchs...
There are some chic areas in France (Mediterranean resort towns, mostly) where enough of the wealthy Russian elite come to shop that the stores have signs in at least two languages: French and Russian. English and Chinese also heavily featured. I'm sure the "Rose of the Mideast" can send her personal shoppers to get her fancy-ass shoes if she wants. In any event, probably a good location if you are interested in looking for rich people to eat.
This is Syria's version of Storming the Bastille. They've freed political prisoners, toppled statues of their tormentors, and ran said tormentors out of the country. The Assads should be glad that they were able to leave the country, because the Capets didn't try to leave France until it was too late, and got to meet Monsieur Guillotine. For some reason, the French Revolution has been on my mind since the election.